


Them's The Rules

by chewysugar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Duelling, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Marauders' Era, Public Display of Affection, Snogging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 13:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11149035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: A friendly dare on a scorching summer's day leads to duelling and something altogether unexpected.





	Them's The Rules

The great catastrophe could entirely be placed at the feet of one Sirius Black. James certainly hadn’t started things. He was, for once in his thirteen years, completely innocent, although in hindsight he should have known better than to have trusted his best mate when he’d suggested going for a stroll around the Lake.

But the unbearable heat that had settled over the castle since the end of April had made the thought of spending another hour cooped up inside nothing short of sheer hell to the two boys.

Sirius had started it all off with a dare: that James couldn’t go fifteen minutes of light dueling in the sweltering heat before passing out.

The entire common room had gone silent at the challenge. James Potter has never one to turn down a dare, and now here he was, shooting hexes and sweating buckets.

James dodged a volley of sand, sent hurtling his way by a well-aimed spell on Sirius’s behalf. Cursing, he ducked behind a large boulder. Anyone with sense had long ago discarded their dark school robes for their cooler underclothes. James’s crisp, white school shirt was already soaked through with sweat from how hard he and Sirius had been dueling, to say nothing of the wretched humidity.

“Coward!” Sirius crowed delightedly. “Come back out and fight like a man!”

“As if you would know a thing about being a man, mate.” James was rewarded for this jibe with an actual stunner bouncing off the edge of the boulder.

His glasses slipped down his nose; for the first time in his life he found himself cursing his windswept hair for being so thick. Had he only been bald like the Fat Friar then he wouldn’t be blinking sweat out of his eyes.

The Lake had become nothing more than an aqueous crucible for the ungodly heat wave. Whatever cool refreshment it offered beneath its surface tempered with the scorching sun to cast a suffocating humidity around the grounds.

“Why did I let you talk me into this again?” James shouted from behind his rocky shelter. “Wait, don’t answer that.”

“Aw, what’s wrong, Potter? Do you not want to hear about what an easy prig you are? Bellatrix has nothing on you when it comes to being loose.”

James saw red. Even though he knew his best friend had only said it to goad him out of his hiding spot, pride overrode his pragmatism.

“How’s this for loose?” He spat, staggering to his feet. Sirius, half-stooping behind a shrubbery, slashed his wand through the air; James reflected the jinx, an act that would have given him serious adulation from Professor Flitwick had the Charms master been present.

James jabbed his wand sharply, as if he meant to stab Sirius. The next second the threads of Sirius’s own sweat-soaked shirt and the rough fabric of his jeans unwound into a thousand ribbons of string.

“Haha!” James crowed. “Now what are you going to do, Pretty Boy? Humiliated, eh? I suspect that—

Evidently Sirius didn’t give a toss for what James suspected, or for being stripped to his skivvies in the middle of the afternoon where anyone could see him. With a dog-like grin that was typical Sirius Black, he slashed his wand in a great arc through the air.

At first James assumed that Sirius had been having a go at him; nothing at all happened for a split-second: no sparks, of flashes of light, no jets of sand or air or flame.

James felt a cool front of air, so alien after the endless weeks of stifling heat that it almost frightened him. He whirled around, and gasped at the sight of the enormous sphere of lake water warbling through towards him. It hovered for a single second, shaking like a melting jelly over James's head.

Then it collapsed, cascading James in cool, briny water.

He laughed, turning his head up to catch the best of the refreshing burst.

“Call that a jinx?” James asked, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “I’ll have to send you a thank you note for that, mate.”

Sirius grinned that canine grin, unabashed at his near-nudity as ever. Then, before James could so much as squeak out his surprise, Sirius chose that moment to attack. A gust of sand swept up as if stirred by gale force winds. It caught James full in the front, crusting his skin and clothes in a layer of drying mud.

Breathing through his mouth, he wiped his glasses slowly on his sandy sleeve.

“False pretenses, eh?” James said. It was on the tip of his tongue to inquire as to whether or not Sirius really had been meant for Slytherin with the rest of his family. But it was one of the few sore spots Sirius possessed, and James wasn’t anywhere near cruel enough to attack it.

He was, however, displeased with having been lulled into a false sense of security and turned into a mud-man enough to retaliate with a well-aimed jelly-legs jinx.

Sirius leapt back, laughing. “Missed me, missed! Now you have to kiss me!”

The imp that had been born with its claw already in James Potter’s mind bit in. With a smirk, James cleared the distance between himself and his best friend. Sirius, still crowing in triumph, didn’t expect James to suddenly turn the duel to something physical.

James saw his friend’s grey eyes go wide; he pressed the flats of his hand into Sirius’s bare chest and pushed him back to the sandy bank behind them. Both boys tumbled to the ground, James’s bracing his drenched and sandy arms either side of Sirius’s body.

It wasn’t as soft a kiss as it could have been. Somewhere between making the choice to go through with this and pinning Sirius to the ground, a fuse in James’s being had gone off; a line of hormones and buried needs and secret desires that made him capture Sirius’s mouth more sloppily and ferociously than he’d anticipated.

Sirius gasped.

Neither boy had ever kissed for real before. Sirius, being in the family that he was in, had born witness to the clandestine affairs between his cousins. James had only second-hand knowledge from the talk in the Quidditch change rooms and what he’d seen walking through the corridors of the castle.

For a moment, neither moved, their lips pressed together experimentally. Heat coursed through James’s veins. He recalled that there was meant to be tongues in kissing. He gave Sirius’s lips an experimental swipe with his own tongue. It was a subtle action, but the impact was profound, as if he’d given an inaudible password to some kind of hidden sanctum.

Sirius’s lips parted, and James darted his tongue inside, feeling the warm dampness, and savoring the taste that was uniquely Sirius Black.

Clever fingers that could cast a hex as well as comfort a friend curled into the back of James’s shirt. Sirius moaned, pulling James close, and for the first time in his memory, James Potter felt mortally afraid. He didn’t know what would happen next; didn’t know what he was supposed to do, even though he wanted to do whatever _it_ was.

Sirius arched upwards into the kiss, and James felt the most intense friction he’d ever experienced.

There was a loud splash from several hundred yards away, followed by a series of laughs and shrieks.

Both boys broke apart as if they’d been struck by lightning. Sirius stared into James’s eyes. He looked so unlike himself: bare skin, long, dark hair fanning out behind his head, his grey eyes glazed over and guileless.

James understood the gravity of what could happen if he forgot about the late afternoon bathers. Certainly whoever they were, they didn’t care a knut for anything else that didn’t involve enjoying the cooling solace of the lake. James and Sirius were buried beneath shrubs and trees. Nobody would find them. Nobody would see them.

But see them do what? James didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t want to do anything damaging. Even if Sirius seemed caught under some kind of yearning spell, James didn’t think he was ready for the fantastic whatever this could become.

Not just yet.

He brushed his lips gently against his best friend’s once more. They were pressed so close together than James’s sodden clothes had gotten Sirius’s bare skin damp. He could feel the power of his friend’s body, the warmth radiating off of him, among other things.

It was too tempting.

James sat back on his haunches.

Sirius lay on the sand for a few moments longer, then slowly sat up.

With the heat spiraling around them, they sat in silence for several moments, James picking at a patch of beach grass.

“Mate?”

James finally allowed himself to look Sirius in the eye. Sirius grinned again, all wild abandon and boundless energy.

“Why’d you go and kiss me, huh?”

“You dared me to,” James said.

“Well then, I dare you to walk me back to the common room in my knickers.” Sirius pushed himself to his feet, his body unfolding like a hunting dog on the prowl.

James stood up. “You’re on.”

“James?”

“Hm?”

Sirius kicked at the sand, looked at James from under his long lashes and, with a trembling optimism, said, “Would you kiss me again if I dared you to?”

“ ‘Course.”

After all, when had anyone ever known James Potter to turn down a dare?

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!


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